Category: Barack Obama

  • Review: In New Biopic ‘Barry,’ The Real Obama Remains Hidden Newsweek 2016-12-16 Tom Shone While President Barack Obama decides on his future—a return to his roots as a community organizer? A de facto leader for the Trump resistance? More writing?—pop culture has stepped in to give him the Mount Rushmore treatment. First we had Southside…

  • How ‘Barry’ Gets Obama Right—And Wrong Newsweek 2016-12-21 Matthew Cooper, Political Editor President Barack Obama during a White House news conference in Washington, December 16. A new Netflix production, “Barry,” charts his college years in New York, when “Barry,” as he was known, wrestled with his racial identity. JONATHAN ERNST/REUTERS There’s less than a month…

  • ‘Barry’ director on race, identity and why the young Obama matters Mashtable 2016-12-20 Proma Khosla Vikram Gandhi didn’t direct the Netflix biopic Barry because he cared about Barack Obama. He made it because he cared about a kid named Barry. Gandhi set out to discover who Barack was before he was Barack, back in 1981.…

  • The Problem With Obama’s Faith in White America The Atlantic 2016-12-13 Tressie McMillan Cottom, Assistant Professor of Sociology Virginia Commonwealth University The president’s optimism about race blinded him to the pervasiveness and stubborn persistence of racism. I screamed a lot while reading Ta-Nehisi Coates’s My President Was Black. When I was done reading and screaming,…

  • The One They’ve Been Waiting for: White Fear and the Rise of Donald Trump Politics of Color: commentary & reflections on race, ethnicity, and politics 2016-11-27 Linda Alvarez, Assistant Professor California State University, Northridge Ivy A. Melgar Cargile, Assistant Professor California State University, Bakersfield Natasha Altema McNeely, Assistant Professor University of Texas, Rio Grande Valley…

  • Obama Leaves Office on High Note, But Public Has Mixed Views of Accomplishments Pew Research Center 2016-12-14 72% have favorable opinion of Michelle Obama With just a few weeks left in Barack Obama’s presidency, Americans’ early judgments of his place in history are more positive than negative. Obama is poised to leave office on a…

  • My President Was Black The Atlantic January/February 2017 Ta-Nehisi Coates, National Correspondent Ian Allen A history of the first African American White House—and of what came next “They’re a rotten crowd,” I shouted across the lawn. “You’re worth the whole damn bunch put together.” — F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby I. “Love Will Make…

  • Watch The Trailer For Barry, Netflix’s Barack Obama Biopic TIME 2016-11-22 Nash Jenkins There are just under two months until Donald Trump is inaugurated, but a sentimental nostalgia for Barack Obama’s presidency has been building for quite some time. The new trailer for Barry, a biographical film about Obama’s days as a student at Columbia…

  • Obama Reckons with a Trump Presidency The New Yorker 2016-11-28 David Remnick, Editor Inside a stunned White House, the President considers his legacy and America’s future. The morning after Donald Trump was elected President of the United States, Barack Obama summoned staff members to the Oval Office. Some were fairly junior and had never been…

  • The End of the Postracial Myth The New York Times Magazine 2016-11-15 Nikole Hannah-Jones Pundits are quick to say that it couldn’t be about prejudice in states like Iowa, where Obama voters went for Trump. But racial anxiety is always close to the surface — and can easily be stoked. On a cold, clear night…